Bruce Willis hangs out in chat rooms&#63

I guess this shouldn’t really come as a big surprise, but sometimes it’s easy to think of movie stars as larger-than-life entities who spend all their time at Hollywood parties or cruising the streets in their Lamborghinis, etc. Not Bruce Willis, it seems. He apparently likes to hang out in…

I guess this shouldn’t really come as a big surprise, but sometimes it’s easy to think of movie stars as larger-than-life entities who spend all their time at Hollywood parties or cruising the streets in their Lamborghinis, etc. Not Bruce Willis, it seems. He apparently likes to hang out in chat forums at movie-fan sites like Ain’t It Cool News from time to time, and talk about his movies — even arguing with critics about the various merits of his films.

According to the sequence of events described over at Freezedried Movies, a discussion of Die Hard III and its proposed rating came up on Ain’t It Cool News — the site that Harry Knowles started in his suburban bedroom many years ago and has turned into the premiere movie news and gossip site — and a poster calling himself Walter B. started commenting, appearing to have some inside knowledge. It soon emerged that this poster was pretending to be Bruce Willis himself (whose real first name is Walter). Another poster scoffed and said he was not, however, and called BS on Walter B. So the poster asked someone to iChat with him and take a screenshot — which someone did, and there was bald-headed Bruce showing off his tattoos.

Bruce isn’t the only movie celebrity to take to the discussion forums to defend themselves. Kevin Smith, the writer and director of Clerks, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and other independent movies, is a prolific blogger at his own site and has been more than happy to wade into various discussions about his movies, including a heated debate on Rotten Tomatoes awhile back about whether Clerks II was a failure or not.

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I'm a Toronto-based writer, and this is where I write about online media, technology and other interesting things I come across on the Web. I am a former senior writer at Gigaom, a former blogger, columnist, reporter and social-media editor at the Globe and Mail and a former writer with the Financial Times of Canada.